Top Dentists

Augusta has one of the best dental schools in the country, so it’s no surprise that the city also boasts an impressive number of practicing dentists, representing every specialty, including those who conduct cutting edge research at the Georgia Health Sciences University School of Dental Medicine. Included here is a listing of the top dentists in the Augusta area as selected by the organization topDentists.

Their selection process is rigorous, but begins with the simple question, “If you had a patient in need of a dentist, which dentist would you send them to?” The nomination pool consisted of all the dentists listed online with the American Dental Association (ada.org), as well as all dentists listed online with their local dental societies, thus allowing virtually every dentist the opportunity to participate. These dentists are also given the opportunity to nominate any missed dentists they feel should be included. Each are sent ballots to complete. Once completed the scores are compiled and averaged. Names are checked against state dental boards to make sure they all have active licenses and there are no pending disciplinary actions. Then each dentist on the list is sent a letter of congratulations informing them of their inclusion.

J. Benjamin Deal
General Dentist

He speaks in a deep, gentle timbre, pacing his words as if there’s no place to be, as if there’s never been any place to be, but here. The syllables march and shuffle and glide in an easy rhythm, dancing to their own sound. “I’m not all that interesting,” says Dr. J. Ben Deal, who has practiced general dentistry in Augusta for almost 35 years. He doesn’t actually say it straight out, in the way of stating a fact. It’s more like he confides it, as one would to a friend.

Everything about the statement, “I’m not all that interesting,” resonates with truth and irony. Granted, most of his days have folded unremarkably into years, with no huge acts of heroism, no incredible accomplishment, to mark their passing. But he is interesting in a Faulknerian sense. It comes down to the character, not the plot. Who he is, rather than what he has done, pulls people in. When he slips into a story, like the distant whistle of train and the hum of metal wheels on metal rails, he invites them to stop and listen.

Growing up in 1950s Statesboro, Ga., Dr. Deal learned how to make friends, the value of family, the importance of Sunday school and what he didn’t want to do when he grew up. Most days, he got on his bike and went wherever he made up his mind to go, which was mostly the recreation department. “It was pretty much Mayberry,” he says, recalling how small Statesboro, the home of what was then Georgia Teachers College, was at the time. “Your parents said, ‘Bye,’ when you left in the morning and ‘Hey,’ when you got home in the afternoon.”

The day of a small town physician, Dr. Deal’s father, had little spare time in it, however. The family lived two blocks from the Bulloch County Hospital and his father worked long hours there. Dr. Deal recalls how residents of the community idolized his father, but even so his tone hints at having missed knowing the man the way others did. As a young man, he made a decision that he would not follow in the footsteps of the generations of Deal men before him. He wanted a different lifestyle, something simpler. Still, he didn’t completely break tradition.“You can’t totally divorce yourself from your upbringing,” Dr. Deal acknowledges. His grandfather graduated from the Medical College of Georgia in 1922 and his father graduated from MCG in 1950, both with M.D.s. In 1974, Dr. Deal graduated from the recently inaugurated MCG School of Dentistry. “Dentistry became a substitute for medicine,” he says. “It gave me more time for family.”

Three days before his 21st birthday he married an Augusta girl and after a two-year dental internship in the Navy, settled down with her to raise their two sons in Augusta. Dr. Deal’s practice is still housed in the building on Wrightsboro Road that his in-laws built for it. “If you make the carrot big enough, they’ll come,” he laughs. From the annual Mothers’ Day dinner he and several friends orchestrate for their wives to maintaining a close relationship with his 94-year-old mother, who lives at Brandon Wilde, to glowing over his children and grandson, he demonstrates genuine commitment to maintaining those relationships. He says, “It’s kind of like perfect attendance at Sunday school: You don’t mess it up.”

He has the same philosophy with his patients and staff. Patients will recognize whether their dentist cares about them or not and, with his gift of instant familiarity, Dr. Deal puts them at ease. He masterfully makes each individual feel as if he or she is the only patient in the building at the time while providing excellent service. “My office is my second family,” he says, extending to his staff the same warmth and compassion he shows his patients. Many staffers have worked with him for more than 20 years and he keeps in touch with several former employees who have moved from the area. “I don’t know if I pick them or if they pick me. A little of both, I guess,” observes Dr. Deal.

That’s him. Honest. Forthright. Humble. Loyal. He finishes reading a non-fiction book, whether he likes it or not, because he believes he owes it to the author. There’s no hesitation when he tells a mother that the best way to raise teenage boys is to keep them busy. He quips, off the cuff, that if a person does something twice it’s a tradition. These things roll off his lips like a chat about the weather. He has a way with words, much like a writer, only he doesn’t need pen and paper. Words willingly organize themselves for him, immensely privileged to be his for the short moment of suspension between Dr. Deal and his listener. He’s deeply sincere. “It makes me happy to be low key,” he says, hinting at the lasting influence of growing up in a place where everybody knew everybody and character reigned supreme.

Dr. Judson Hickey

Periodontist

What is red, white and blue and patriotic all over? What beats in tune with “The Star Spangled Banner”? Dr. Judson Hickey’s heart, of course. He can think of no cause more worthy than serving his country, which he did proudly for 26 years, until retiring in 1998. Yet, as many travelers along Walton Way will attest, he keeps the spirit of military camaraderie alive. On Christmas, and also when one of his children, who followed in his footsteps, returns home from a tour of duty, he and his wife, Cay, put the large light-up tooth, given to them at Fort Campbell in Kentucky when he made lieutenant colonel in the Army dental corps, out on their front lawn. It makes a memorable statement about who they are and what they value. But that’s not the end of the story.

In the beginning, Dr. Hickey went to Tennessee Tech on a football scholarship. After two years, he gave in to a nagging desire. The Vietnam War was in full swing and many of his friends had been sent over already. Some never came back. He joined the Navy as a dental technician in 1972. “I wanted to go to Vietnam. It was something I needed to do. It was my turn.” To his great and lasting disappointment, however, the Navy didn’t send him there.

Though Dr. Hickey, now in private practice in Augusta as a periodontist, chose to enter the armed forces out of a sense of duty to his country, he had a distinct advantage over other enlisted men. Both his father and grandfather set strong examples for him in their war-time military service. A Methodist minister, Dr. Hickey’s grandfather served in WWI as an Army chaplain. Dr. Hickey’s dad, who brought the family to Augusta in 1966 when he accepted the position as the first dean of the soon to be formed Medical College of Georgia School of Dentistry, was a WWII Naval navigator.

In 1975 he was back in Augusta, finishing his college degree on the GI Bill at Augusta College. A Navy scholarship paid his way through MCG Dental School. Upon finishing, he joined the Fleet Marine Force at Camp Lejeune for four years. When he met his wife, Cay, in the summer of ’79, and they married a short time later, he promised her they would do one four-year tour and that would be it. He would bring her back to Augusta where she had grown up.

But in 1983, while he was at Camp Lejeune, the Beirut terrorist bombing occurred. It changed everything. There were 220 marines killed when suicide bombers drove trucks into two separate barracks housing multinational forces during the Lebanese Civil War. Cay Hickey was thrown into action. Those marines’ families were based at Camp Lejeune and Cay Hickey became a comforter and supporter to many of the wives and children who lost husbands and fathers. This is when “my wife really came on board,” says Dr. Hickey.

Due to the expanded education benefits of the Army, Dr. Hickey later switched military branches. “I joined the Army hoping to qualify for the periodontal residency,” he explains. From 1988 to 1990, he completed a periodontal residency at Fort Gordon. Periodontics, which deals with gum disease, intrigued Dr. Hickey for three reasons: Number one: He didn’t know much about it. Number two: It was the up and coming thing at the time. Number three: It complemented his experience with oral surgery he received in the Navy. “The mouth is the gateway to the health of the body,” says Dr. Hickey, whose determination for dentistry and medicine to cooperate to provide coordinated care for the total health and well-being of individuals has continued beyond his career as a military dentist.

Now in retirement, he is a source of encouragement to his children and sons-in-law who have chosen military careers. Dr. Hickey is pleased that they experience the same fulfillment that he did. “There’s just nothing like it,” he says. “It’s a total lifestyle.” Service in the military helped him see the bigger picture. He knows his service made a difference to the men and women with whom he worked, to his family and to his country. And he knows that the service of his children and sons-in-law who have completed several tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan makes a difference too.

The Vietnam War put a calling in Dr. Hickey’s heart, even though, to his great disappointment, he was never sent over. In hindsight, however, he says, “[Not going] is probably the best thing that ever happened to me. It motivated me to stay [in the military].” He learned the meaning of true service, all in for the greater good. “Mom, the flag and apple pie, that’s the bottom line,” says Dr. Hickey. That and a heart made of red, white and blue.

Dr. Michael Rogers
Orthodontics

A small boy sits on the back fence of his 1940s 15th Street home, swinging one leg, using the other to balance himself. He watches construction crews building parts of Gilbert Manor. What captures his attention is probably what captivates all small boys—the ring of machines hitting metal, the grind of graders and excavators and cranes moving materials, the hardy voices of workmen creating a whole out of parts. To boys, these are nothing less than masculine miracles to which to aspire.

Maybe as he sits there he wonders what his mother is making for lunch. Maybe he considers asking her if he can go to the park across the street later to play. He might be contemplating ways those construction crews can work more efficiently or considering various improvements he would make to the structure.

This is how orthodontist Dr. Michael Rogers’s mind operates. He continuously and systematically looks for ways to simplify systems and procedures. From his practice on Wheeler Road to his marathon training schedule, efficiency is key. “You don’t need to make things any more complicated than they are,” he says.

Taking things that work and making them better is his trademark. In 1973, he opened his practice. Though it ran smoothly, he quickly noticed areas primed for improvement. Thus, he began tweaking office procedures until arriving at the streamlined process in place today. In 1997, he ran his first marathon, hobbling away, knowing that yes he had finished, but that he also needed to improve his training. He has since honed it to a finely tuned regimen of rising at 3:45 a.m., completing a 13- to 20-mile run before most people complete their first cup of coffee, settling down for a 20-minute nap and then arriving at work ready for his day.

It’s no surprise, then, that when use of the Herbst Appliance, an apparatus designed to guide the growth of the jaws to improve the profile and reduce the protrusion, had a resurgence in the 1970s, Dr. Rogers saw another opportunity to apply his skills. Interestingly, the appliance was originally published by its inventor, Dr. Emil Herbst, in 1905 and lost favor probably as a result of the difficultly in fabrication at that time. “Mechanically, in orthodontics, I’ve always looked for more simple and streamlined ways to do things,” Dr. Rogers says. Ultimately, the orthodontic appliance improves a patient’s profile while reducing the number of tooth extractions necessary. Even better, since it is in the mouth 100 percent of the time, until removed by the orthodontist, it does not require patient compliance and is hardly noticeable.

Despite the upside, Dr. Rogers found the Herbst Appliance of the ’70s cumbersome and time-consuming for orthodontists to insert and remove. By the early 1980s, his creative juices overflowed. “I just decided I wanted to find a way to get it in and out,” he says, without the use of metal crowns to hold it in place. “I came up with the idea of reinforced bands.” Working with Specialty Appliances in Atlanta to implement his idea, Dr. Rogers describes the process as an evolution. Through trial and error, the Rogers Banded-Herbst was born.

He does not hold a patent for the device. He does not receive royalties from it. Still, he teaches other orthodontists how to use it so that they, too, may improve patient outcomes. Beyond a desire to meet the challenge of continuous revision and advancement of all that he touches, he aspires to serve his colleagues, saying, “We’ve all got to be willing to give back to the professions that have helped us.”

Dr. Rogers has come full circle. After moving from his 15th Street boyhood home to Lakewood Drive off of Kissingbower Road, he became a member and co-president of the first graduating class of the new Butler High School. From there he went to Emory University where, following two years of undergraduate study, he entered the Emory School of Dentistry. He spent two additional years practicing general dentistry in the army, then returned to his boyhood stomping grounds in 1971, completing a specialty in orthodontics at the newly-opened Medical College of Georgia School of Dentistry.

The 15th Street soil is fertile land for growing boys and growing minds. The Medical College of Georgia eventually built student housing where his home once stood and the new School of Dentistry is firmly footed in the place where Gilbert Manor’s foundation was poured. Dr. Rogers once sat right there, on his back fence, one foot swinging, one leg balancing, gazing at the city growing up around him—gazing into his own future of creating a whole out of the parts.

Dr. Jimmy Londono
Prosthodontist

Life can turn on a single event, a snap decision. Suddenly, a course changes, spinning toward the unplanned and the unexpected. Perhaps it isn’t chance, however, when it leads a person right to the place. Maybe the getting there makes him appreciate the being there all the more.

Dr. Jimmy Londono sold his dental practice in his hometown of Armenia in Colombia and eagerly left for Mexico to continue his studies in oral surgery. He was excited about the future. Unfortunately, nothing turned out as he hoped. A sad situation was afoot when he arrived at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. It was closed due to a strike and Dr. Londono had no choice but to board another plane and return to Colombia.

During his return-trip layover in Miami, to pass time, he called an old friend to catch up. Upon the friend’s urging, Londono decided not to get on his connector flight to Colombia. With no dental practice to return to, thus no strings to hold him, he headed to Atlanta. The friend was opening a Mexican restaurant and suggested that Londono come help for a couple of months and earn some extra money. It sounded like a good idea. He would have an adventure, then go back to Colombia. When payment for his dental practice never came through, a couple months became three years of waiting tables.

About six months into his extended adventure, a diner struck up a conversation, inquiring into Dr. Londono’s personal story. His passion for the short-stopped career he desperately missed was evident in the exchange. That diner, who fortuitously worked in a dental office, recommended he attend an upcoming conference to make connections that might help him start fresh in dentistry in the United States. “Since I was a little boy, I was fascinated with dentistry,” says Dr. Londono, for whom it is a vocation and not simply a career. “I always told my mother we needed to go to the dentist. I wanted to sit in the chair and have him look in my mouth.”

Driven by his sincere love of the profession, he went to the conference and circulated among the various booths, eventually talking to a bright, attractive woman representing a dental implants expert, Dr. Edward Mills. Dr. Mills instructed the Maxi Course in Implant Dentistry at the Medical College of Georgia. Dr. Londono knew what his next step would be, but he had to raise the funds.

He worked 18-hour days to earn enough money to pay for the Maxi Course. Then he drove his $400 beater back and forth between Atlanta and Augusta, completing the course while continuing to wait tables. He also started an internship in Dr. Mills’s office. Next, he entered MCG’s three-year prosthodontics residency program, and in 2007 he accepted an instructor position in the School of Dentistry, where he is now an assistant professor. Through hard work, he has regained all that was lost so many years ago.

Where did he find the inspiration to battle back, to begin again from scratch? “My biggest example is my mom,” Dr. Londono says. While still an infant, Dr. Londono’s father died, leaving his mother to raise 11 children. To support her family, she raised chickens and cows, and took in wash and cleaned houses. Never a quitter, she managed to earn and save enough money to send all 11 children to college. Fondly recalling his childhood and the example his mother set, Dr. Londono says, “She showed me I have to do whatever it takes in life to go to the next level.”

By 2004, the time came at last to return to Colombia. But this was not simply a triumphant return to his hometown of Armenia. He went to pay it forward. “I think if we’ve had a chance to live a good life, we should share,” says Dr. Londono. Using vacation time and personally paying for supplies, he worked out of a friend’s dental office, returning three times that year to provide dental implants, crowns, bridges and fillings to those who otherwise could not afford it. In 2005, he brought his colleagues and fellow Colombians, Drs. Jorge Arce and Leonardo Granados, onboard. And so began Sonriále a Colombia, translated Give a Smile Back to Colombia. For one week in the months of April, May and November, Drs. Londono, Arce and Granados, along with three to four additional dental specialists, pay their own way and bring their own supplies to work in the clinic Dr. Londono built in Armenia to house Sonriále a Colombia.

Many people—his mother, his friend, the diner, the woman at the conference, Dr. Mills, others—some by chance, some by intent, some knowingly, some unknowingly—assisted Dr. Londono in getting where he is now. By touching a life, that life is changed, a lesson not lost on him. Though the path was tangled and unnavigated, he says he would do it all again. “Every day that I get up, I’m more blessed,” he says. Every day that he gets up, so many others are blessed, as well.

Dr. Holland Maness
Orthodontics
Forensic Dentistry

Tanned, broad shoulders give way to the head of a man steadily peering down toward his bare feet trekking methodically across the white sand. He flicks out shark teeth and other fossils as he goes for his adoring and diligent daughter to collect. Her father has been vacationing on Edisto Island since the ’50s and is introducing his own five children to the wonders its coast grabs from the sea, displaying them for the observant beachcomber to discover.

Holding her newfound treasures in the palm of her hand, she studies their shape, their color, their hardness. She considers how the teeth might have fit into the previous owners’ mouths, how they tore and churned food, how they fell out, what tide washed them onto the beach. Soon she learns to spot the stranded teeth all on her own. They glisten black against the white sand—all that remains of a creature that sank back into the salty depths long before she or her family felt sunshine on their faces.

Since then, Dr. Holland Maness has become an expert in teeth. Choosing dentistry, and specifically orthodontics, as a second career, she returned to school after 12 years in hospital administration. In her very first class at the then Medical College of Georgia School of Dentistry, she received instruction in building wax molds of teeth. Following the initial practical, her professor announced the grades, which ranged from a failing 55 to an A+ 100. Dr. Maness had disappointingly earned the lowest grade in the class. “That was a pivotal point. It was devastating,” she says, “but it motivated me to improve. I never walk away.” Improve she did, catapulting herself to second in her class by graduation. This strong finish helped her nab one of the school’s coveted orthodontic residency spots.

Like her father, Dr. Maness has a curious nature. “He had an active mind,” she says of her dad, now deceased. During dental school, she developed an interest in forensic dentistry. In her junior year, she requested and received permission from the School of Dentistry to attend a two-week student elective at the Bureau of Legal Dentistry at the University of British Columbia, the only North American lab dedicated to forensic dentistry. Then in her senior year, she took a forensic odontology course at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

After completing her residency, she won a fellowship to study forensics at University of Texas Health Sciences Center. Every other month, for 13 months, she spent five days in San Antonio working on cases at the city’s medical examiner’s office, including homicides. During her fellowship, she also launched two research projects. One involved developing digital model software to create dental overlays used to resolve bite mark cases. The goal of her other project was to gather data to support the hypothesis that every individual has a unique bite, in the same way that fingerprints are particular to each person, which produces an identifying mark.

While most people think dental forensics is limited to identifying bodies using dental records, experts in the field are also called to provide age estimations on both the living and deceased, as well as to determine if marks on a body were made by teeth. Forensic dentists also help identify who or what made those bite marks. Having developed a special interest and expertise in bite marks, Dr. Maness works with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to assist in solving cases. This isn’t CSI, though. The process generally takes much longer than depicted on television requiring her to use pictures and models to draw conclusions, rather than flesh and bone.

For Dr. Maness, who is on track to earn board certification, which will make her one of only two boarded forensic dentists in Georgia, forensic dentistry isn’t just a job. In fact, she doesn’t receive compensation for her services. Nor is it a morbid fascination. For her it is “mission work.” She is sensitive to the fact that the most vulnerable among us, women and children, are often the victims of conflicts and abuse. “For whatever reason, I’m compelled to do this,” says Dr. Maness. “I can use my unique set of skills for the greater good. I give a voice to people who don’t have one.”

Regularly acknowledging the tragedy of human violence and deeply empathizing with victims and their families can drain her emotionally. “I could not do forensics fulltime,” she says. Therefore, she seeks to maintain balance, and her orthodontics practice provides grounding. She keeps her forensics out of the office, focusing solely on her patients, who provide her with the “knowledge that the majority of people in the world have happy homes and families.” Interactions and successes with her orthodontics clients fuel her fight for the people who don’t.

Of course, Dr. Maness sees the irony in it—in all of it. As an orthodontist, she works to straighten and align teeth. Yet as a forensic dentist,she hopes for bite marks to have been made by a person whose teeth have distinguishable irregularities. As a child she trained her eyes to see patterns and shapes and colors camouflaged by sand and crushed shells arranged by the tides in undulating strands along the shore. As an adult, she has trained her eyes to detect patterns and shapes in the half-moon indentations left by teeth bearing down on flesh.
Edisto Island remains a haven for Dr. Maness and her husband and children. She continues to fill small bags and containers with shark teeth, feeding her fascination for the stories they tell. She continues to seek connections between the past and the present, picturing how the pieces fit together. She continues to apply herself to putting smiles on faces, whatever it requires.

*This list is excerpted from the 2011 topDentists™ list, a database that includes listings for more than 200 dentists and specialists in the Augusta area. The list is based on thousands of detailed evaluations of dentists and professionals by their peers. The complete database is available at usatopdentists.com. For more information, call 706-364-0853; write P.O. Box 970, Augusta, GA 30903; email info@usatopdentists.com; or visit usatopdentists.com.

DISCLAIMER topDentists has used its best efforts in assembling material for this list but does not warrant that the information contained herein is complete or accurate, and does not assume, and hereby disclaims, any liability to any person for any loss or damage caused by errors or omissions herein whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause. Copyright 2010 by topDentists LLC, Augusta, GA. All rights reserved. This list, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission. No commercial use of the information in this list may be made without permission of topDentists LLC. No fees may be charged, directly or indirectly, for the use of the information in this list without permission.